Steve Buttry, Dearly Departed Husband, Father and Grandfather. Former Director of Student Media, LSU's Manship School of Mass Communication

Archive for October, 2013

Update: The Reporter-Herald in Loveland, Colo., wins the fall engagement contest with its Vietnam veterans project (which I’ve moved to the top of the listing below).

The Reporter-Herald took second in our Valentine’s Day engagement project, but will win a bigger box of candy this year. Second-place in fall engagement goes to the Berkshire Eagle for its scary photo both (moved to second in the listing below).

The Reporter-Herald won 105 votes (41 percent), well ahead of the Eagle at 88 votes and 34 percent. The Daily Freeman and Marin Independent Journal tied for third place with 21 votes each.

Congratulations to Jessica Benes and her colleagues. The candy will go out today.

Halloween is a good day to launch voting for the best fall engagement project at Digital First Media.

Early in October, I sought nominations. Now it’s your turn to vote for the best. Please read all the nominations, then come back up to vote.

Some of them have been edited slightly, mostly because they referred to events that were upcoming but have now passed. I have asked the nominators for updates where appropriate. I have included the updates I received, and will add others if I receive them. (And, if I’ve missed an entry, please let me know right away!)

I should make one point clear before you vote: The entries didn’t have to be specifically fall-themed (Halloween, leaves, elections, football, etc.). If you engaged your community this fall, your project is eligible. So go ahead and vote (and encourage your colleagues and community to vote). I will close the voting Monday night and announce the winner on Tuesday. I’ll send a Priority Mail box stuffed with Halloween candy to the winning newsroom.

The nominees are posted below, first those submitted in the comments on my first blog post, in the order I received them, then those submitted through a DFM Google group, then one submitted by email:

Reporter-Herald

Jessica Benes’ nomination:

The Associated Veteran’s Club in Loveland is honoring Vietnam Vets this Veteran’s Day, welcoming them home since the Vietnam War was not a pleasant war to be part of. I am writing a weeklyseries on Vietnam vets, highlighting a few local ones, and inviting the community to call a Google Voice number and leave messages of thanks to Vietnam vets. Those calls will be posted online with photos and transcribed in the paper for a Veteran’s Day story.

This will be our Sunday package on Nov. 10. So the big story will be Nov. 10 rather than Nov. 11. Here are some links following. In addition, I’ve been adding a Storify slideshow of Tout videos and quotes to each story, adding to the Storify as I complete another vet story.

I won’t go into detail about the specific points in the memo, except to say that I largely agree with what he wrote. But my point here is to say that you should write something like that for your newsroom.

If you’re an employee, you can agree or disagree with Jim about the culture he wants for Politico, and you can debate how well the organization achieves the culture. But you understand the culture he wants. You want the same sort of clarity in your organization about what the boss wants.

Maybe you shouldn’t write about culture. Maybe you should write about workflow or ethics or your vision for the future of your organization. But you should write. (more…)

I won’t try to summarize Khazan’s argument here, except to say that she dismissed the value of coding for most journalists:

If you want to be a reporter, learning code will not help. It will only waste time that you should have been using to write freelance articles or do internships—the real factors that lead to these increasingly scarce positions.

She couldn’t be more wrong. And I say this as someone who knows little coding. I took a web design class in the 1990s but forgot most of it. I can cut and paste embed codes or other snippets of code and sometimes I can find or fix a problem in the HTML version of a post. But one of the most glaring holes in my skill set is my ignorance of coding. Filling that gap is on my someday list, but my somedays have been too rare and my list too long.

If you’re a journalism student, fill that gap now, even if you want to be a reporter (or whatever you want to be). If you’re on a journalism school curriculum committee, insist that your students fill that gap.

Here are six reasons why J-schools should teach students to code: (more…)

Video helped tell the story of the 1971 Farragut state championship, but I couldn’t use the video in this 1996 story.

Sometimes I ponder how I might do the memorable stories of my career differently today, using digital tools.

Today I’m starting an occasional series of blog posts that will revisit some of those stories, sharing that musing as well as discussing some other journalism lessons and techniques that those stories illustrate.

I’ll start with an easy example. This story involved a video, but I wrote it in 1996, before news sites could post video. In those dial-up days, no one had the bandwidth to show or watch video online.

This is a story I’ve citedbefore in my blog (and I mentioned it in the chapter I wrote for the Verification Handbook that will be published soon by the European Journalism Centre). It was a story (a four-part series, actually, for the Omaha World-Herald), looking back 25 years at the Iowa state championship of the Farragut High School girls basketball team. (more…)

Halloween is a time of fun for children and adults. You could invite people to submit photos or videos of costumes, then have community vote for the best costume (perhaps with awards in different categories: funny, scary, homemade, age groups, etc.). You could invite submissions for recipes for Halloween parties. You could map community haunted houses, Halloween events and lavishly decorated homes and yards.

Football provides engagement opportunities: seeking photos and videos from high school (or youth) games and/or from tailgate parties; fantasy leagues; predictions (high school, college and/or pro).

Maybe your local major league team is in the baseball post-season and you’re engaging around baseball. (more…)